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I have wanted a VE.Direct extension cable before, but Victron doesn't make one.
I am not sure if it is possible or why it wouldn't be, but I though that before I asked I should make sure that this would be something useful to other people too.
So would you buy a VE.Direct extension cable?
If you would, how long would you want it to be?
The cables in my system are quite long. longer than the standard ones. I guess 2 or 3 meters would be a good length for an extension cable. You wouldn't really want the whole run to be longer than 5 metres with the possibility of low level 3,3V TTL signals being carried on the cable.
The trouble with the JST-PH is that, as far as I know, there is no "crimpable" male contacts. The male parts are designed to be PCB mounted, thus soldered. If an extension cable were to be made it would need to soldered on the male end, which is time consuming and thus costly to manufacture.
I've always made up my own cables to the length I want with the female contacts and shells at each end which is easy to crimp.
It's easy for me to do because I have the tools, but I guess a normal person might struggle to do this or not wish to outlay on tools for a single job.
Yes if you are talking about one male and one female end to extend bluetooth dongle or similar,
Sizes, 1, or 2 meter and 5 meter would be a great addition to what Victron offers. I need a 1 meter right away. Talked to the folks at JST and they sell the parts but they need to be crimped according to the west coast sales rep and I don't have the tooling needed to do that.
If your end goal is to connect to a Venus or CCGX that is beyond the range of VE.Direct, you can use a USB extension cable.
In our bus we used this simple and affordable 10m active USB extension cable from the CCGX to the power bay: https://amzn.to/2GAojRZ
We connected it to a 4-way USB bridge: https://amzn.to/2tgjLsk
And then we uses the VE.Direct to USB interface for each MPPT:
https://www.victronenergy.com/accessories/ve-direct-to-usb-interface
This setup avoided us needing to pull two VE.Direct wires from the CCGX to the power bay, and it left room for adding more solar controllers in the future too.
Cheers,
- Chris
Interesting! Currently I am just trying to move a BT Dongle up higher in the Coach so I can connect to it from anywhere inside.
My local Victron dealer talked me out of buying the Venus twice now.. Says its overkill for my small installation. Just a couple of SmartSolar controllers (110/50 & 75/15) and SBS device for battery temp. Sure would be nice have all the solar info in one page though. -Bill
If the budget allows, a CCGX and a BMV is awesome.
I keep looking at the bmv specs. I have a Trimetric meter currently. (wish it had BT) Anyone know of a comparison chart between the BMV712 and the Trimetric? Currently I cannot come up with a good reason to replace it. Although I would like the bluetooth.
Unless you have a CCGX or something that takes full advantage of the Victron integration, I think your existing shunt is probably enough.
Yes, 5 m.
e.g. a product which has quite the limited standard cable length (LoRaWan module). An extension cable would make it easier to choose for the option of extending the V.E. direct vs extending the antenna cable. (In situations where the antenna needs to be far from the to monitor device, especially for chargers on board, which are often placed close to the battery bank)
Hi all, yes would be nice. But only for the accessories with a fixed Ve.Direct cable.
The VE.Direct Lorawan and the VE.Direct bluetooth dongle are the only two products that come to mind; did I forget any?
For all other products, the max length cable that we produce, 10 meters, is the max length of cable that can be used without risking issues in the protocol communication.
As @technomadia said; the way to extend a connection when connection to a Venus-device, is by using USB extension cables, either just a high quality (= thick) cable; or a powered hub at a distance. But also here; eventually you’ll get vague, hard to troubleshoot and define issues.
I would use a much longer cable or an extension. If I could get one that was 20 meters or 30 meters, that would be awesome. If Victron would just publish a maximum length (in terms of maximum allowable latency) then I would even build my own shielded cable, but unfortunately, Victron hasn't seemed to publish anything like that.
I know that maximum lengths are impacted by 3 considerations... latency, interference, and attenuation. I can eliminate the latter two by using something like Cat 7 shielded cable, but I can't know if it'll work with the latency without figuring out which Victron engineer to talk to.
